Getting Downsized Was My Reward

Anyone who pursues a liberal arts education wonders what the ultimate pay off for their sacrifice will look like.  Mine was losing my job.

Allow me to explain.

I'm Not A Risk-Taker

Five years ago I took the one of the biggest gambles of my life.

Within the space of 6 months, I resigned from two full-time radio jobs, moved my family to Cedar City, Utah and enrolled as a full time student at an unaccredited school.

Plenty of family and friends tried to gently warn me about the risk I was taking.

To them, my walking away from secure employment with benefits to pursue a liberal arts education made about as much sense as bathing in gasoline and drying off next to an open fire.

I'm certain that had I bought a Harley or a grown a ponytail, my choices could have been written off as a mid-life crisis.  But in reality, I felt an overwhelming sense of personal mission steering me in pursuit of this type of education.

Deep in my core, I recognized a call to do more with my life than I had done.  I felt an intuitive understanding that if I were to fulfill my life's purpose, a world class education would be necessary.

The great souls who have shaped human history have always paid a dear price to become better individuals.

There is no high road or shortcut to realizing one's potential.

In late December of 2005, I took a deep breath and stepped into the unknown.

What On Earth Have I Done?

Trying to support my growing family on a third of our former income was only the first of many challenges.  At first, I was only able to secure part time radio work.  Eventually my hours became full time but my pay stubbornly kept its part time proportions.

Our savings quickly dwindled and financial worry dogged my thoughts relentlessly as debts mounted.

School required a heavy commitment of personal study time which narrowed my choices to focusing on supporting my family or doing justice to my studies.  I chose the latter as my figurative wolves howled at our doorstep.

Household and automotive repairs and maintenance began to accumulate, adding to the stress.  Our ability to pay our mortgage on time was becoming difficult.

We added two more children to our family and subsequently outgrew and had to replace 2 vehicles.

A stress-related condition called Alopecia areata caused large bald patches to appear on my face and scalp eventually leading me to shave my head to avoid the appearance of having mange.

In my heart I knew I was doing the right thing, but a nagging question would pop into my head every so often asking, "Are you sure this is worth it?"

I finished my undergraduate work in spring of 2008 and continued on in pursuit of my graduate degree.  By fall of 2009, economics dictated that I adjust my focus to providing for my family and my classroom studies ended.

My personal studies, however, continued.  They were supplemented by teaching opportunities that included professional speaking, writing, and teaching online classes. Even my radio duties afforded me a chance to continue to learn and teach.

As the economy continued to worsen and unemployment continued to climb, I clung to my radio job with a mixture of gratitude and frustration.  I was grateful to be employed, but seemed trapped in a dead end, low-paying job--that I happened to love doing.

I wanted to do more but was unwilling to give up the security of known employment for the risk of seeking greater opportunity.

"When will this education pay off?" I wondered.

I Get My Answer

The answer to that question came on the last day of February when I was informed that my position with the radio station had been eliminated as part of a reduction in force.

As the chill that accompanies bad news wore off, I sensed something very different was taking place in my life.  I had just lost my job in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Why on earth did I feel at peace?

As I prayerfully examined my options, I realized that two remarkable things had changed since I had committed to pursuing my education.  First, my view of the world had expanded.

Instead of radio being my sole means of income, I saw innumerable opportunities before me.  Not just to earn a paycheck, but to use my understanding and talents in ways that had a positive impact on those around me.  I could now write, speak and teach effectively to diverse audiences in widely varied settings.

Secondly, my education had created fruitful relationships with others who were likewise engaged in paying the price to fulfill their personal missions.

Those relationships, forged in the fires of personal sacrifice and intense study, produce individuals whose goal is to create rather than copy.  They develop leaders who prize the value of others and who labor to have impact instead of simply comparing themselves to the rest of the world.

Such leaders understand the need for teamwork in magnifying their own efforts.  They are connectors.

With this change in my worldview, I marveled as opportunity after opportunity gravitated to me as the word spread that I'd been downsized.  Amazingly, many of these opportunities not only aligned with my personal mission but also allowed me to continue to develop my talents and knowledge.

For the first time in my life, I was free to choose which opportunities best fit my purpose and my family's needs.  There was abundance in every direction I looked.  The stress of not having a job was threatening to give way to having more blessings than I was capable of receiving.

Now that's a problem I wish everyone could face.

I am now focusing on three highly promising ventures with more waiting in the wings.

It's no exaggeration to say that my job loss was a huge blessing disguised as a minor setback.  It was a blessing that required a combination of Divine Providence and a liberal arts education to truly appreciate.

Perhaps you've pondered making the deep sacrifice of gaining a world class education in pursuit of your life's mission.  As one who has just experienced the difference it can make, I can attest that it's worth it.
  

Food Safety at Any Cost?

Sitting down to our daily meals is such a commonplace occurrence for most of us that we scarcely give it a second thought.  But the safety of the food we eat is becoming the focal point of an increasingly intense tug of war between federal regulators and food growers and producers at every level-- right down to our own gardens.  The issue of food safety is closely tied to other issues that affect how and what we eat.  To better understand what's at stake when it comes to feeding ourselves, a bit of historical perspective is in order.

One of the most significant advancements in human history was the shift that moved mankind from the Nomadic age to the Agrarian age in which planting and harvesting largely replaced hunting and gathering as the principal means of obtaining food.  By creating permanent settlements, usually near a reliable source of water, societies found they could eat better, live better and enjoy far greater comfort than was possible within a nomadic existence.

Historian Will Durant in his series The Story of Civilization claims that the Agrarian Age may well be what made civilization possible since the growing, harvesting and storing of crops allowed mankind an unprecedented amount of leisure time to pursue education, art and culture.  Food was produced locally and wealth was measured by land ownership.  Even with the advent of civilization, a large percentage of people still produced roughly half of the food on their table, through gardening, and keeping a milk cow or chickens.  This changed drastically with the arrival of the Industrial Age.    

The industrial age greatly changed the entire landscape of how most people lived their lives.  People became more concentrated in larger cities and goods were primarily purchased at central locations.  Mass production and distribution created a huge disconnect in how the masses obtained their food.  Though food was plentiful, and available in greater variety than ever before, many people became completely out of touch with the means of producing food and, in turn, became almost entirely dependent upon others for their daily sustenance.  Purchasing our food at the supermarket became the norm and even a person who lived next door to a farmer or a dairy was far more likely to buy their produce or milk at the store rather than from their neighbor.

Mass production of food led to the creation of agri-business giants like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland who along with other large food corporations have become major players in supplying our food.  These companies have also pioneered the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) including plants, seeds and animals in order to produce larger yields.  This practice has raised concerns ranging from the implications of allowing the companies' control of seeds as intellectual property to the impact of genetically modified food upon human nutrition.

Now the Information Age is overtaking the Industrial Age and we are seeing a trend that steers away from the mass production approach that typified the pinnacle of the Industrial Age.  In the U.S., increasing numbers of people are choosing to "downshift" their lifestyles by leaving large cities and six figure incomes for a more modest, rural existence that, more often than not, includes having some land and producing a portion of their own food.  Community Supported Agriculture cooperatives (CSA) are catching on in many areas where residents can purchase shares in a small, locally operated farms that provide them with food produced in their own communities.  Farmers markets and private gardening are also becoming popular means of obtaining locally grown, organically non-genetically modified food within one's community.

While these local sources of food are gaining acceptance, they are still far from commonplace.

Few of us have encountered the specter of empty store shelves in our grocery stores and yet the system by which those shelves are kept filled is dependent upon carefully timed resupply and distribution that takes place every couple of days.  A truckers strike, bad weather or any number of other factors can prevent those store shelves from being replenished and at that point the learning curve then becomes incredibly steep for those who must now figure out how to feed themselves.   

The bottom line is that today a vast amount of our population no longer has any concept of what is required to grow, harvest and transport their food from the field to their table.  And in regards to the safeguarding the quality of our food, we have placed that responsibility in the hands of a few state and federal regulatory agencies.  But these agencies are now beginning to focus their attention beyond the mass producers of food products and to exercise greater control over small growers and local producers.

Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that roughly 5,000 people die from food-borne illness in America annually.  But most cases of food contamination are traced to large scale operations and not the small local producers.  So why the increased focus on the local producers?

When the Food Safety Modernization Act was passed by Congress last December and signed into law earlier this year, it was billed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the "most significant safety law of the law 100 years".  But the law has also become a flashpoint of concern for agriculture groups, small food producers and organic farmers who see the law as an unprecedented expansion of federal regulatory power over the ability of people to produce their own food.

In a nation where we always seem to be just one more law away from safety, the enforcement of current food safety regulations have resulted in SWAT teams raiding Amish farmers and organic farmers co-ops over allegations of selling products that haven't been properly regulated.  The further expansion of federal power in this arena raises the question:  Is there such a thing as too much safety?

The 80 page Food Safety Modernization Act moves the Food and Drug Administration out of the realm of mere inspection and into the realm of proactive prevention of food-borne illness.  It expands the enforcement powers for the FDA to where in the event of a food "emergency" or "major contamination" the FDA could place all food and farms under the the Department of Homeland Security; an agency which is mentioned no less than 41 times in the law's text.  The FDA will have the power to conduct warrant-less searches of the business records of even small growers and producer even if there is no clear evidence that a law has been broken.

Depending upon how the regulations are interpreted and applied, all food production facilities within the U.S may be required to register with the federal government and pay an annual registration fee.  Fines for paperwork infractions can go as high as $500,000 for a single offense.  Producers who sell or distribute food outside of government control could be prosecuted as smugglers.  To handle the increase of mandated inspections of food processing facilities and other provisions of the new law, the FDA will be required to hire more inspectors at greater taxpayer expense.

In fairness, the Act contains a number of exemptions (under certain conditions) for small farms and very small food producers who sell their wares within a certain geographical radius and have less than $500,000 in annual sales.  But the problem remaining is that the law is written broadly and vaguely enough to give the FDA a great deal of discretion.  Can we trust that the FDA will not expand its enforcement efforts to small growers and producers?  How many other regulatory agencies have experienced mission creep as time goes on?  It is much easier to prevent abuse of power by limiting government than it is to correct abuses made possible by ambiguity in the laws.

Concerns over the law have prompted Utah lawmakers, among others, to consider legislation that would exempt agriculture produced and purchased within the state of Utah from federal regulations.  Rep. Bill Wright's HB365 seeks to exempt Utah growers, both large and small, from federal agricultural regulations on products cultivated and sold within the state.  The Utah Intrastate Commerce Project was launched as a means to protect small farmers who engage in farmers markets or Community Supported Agriculture cooperatives from a harsh federal regulatory climate that places unreasonable costs and mandates on them.  This food sovereignty approach has been also pursued, with varying degrees of success, in Georgia, Wyoming, Vermont, Kentucky and Florida.                

Defenders of the Food Safety Modernization Act have expressed reactions ranging from puzzlement to scorn over those who would question the wisdom of the law, but it's not a matter of having intensive, inflexible regulation of every aspect of the food supply or having to watch our children die from eating tainted, dangerous food.  Local growers are easily recognizable within their local markets and have no incentive to produce tainted goods.  This is an issue where the correct answer is more likely to be found somewhere in between the two extremes.  

Economist and author Tom E. Woods offers a tongue-in-cheek characterization of the regulatory mindset as follows:

"Without [federal regulation], America would be populated by illiterates, half of us would be dead from quack medicine or exploding consumer products, and the other half would lead a feudal existence under the iron fist of private firms that worked them to the bone for a dollar a week."

The truth, of course, it that even with minimal regulatory oversight, people will not devolve back to cave-dwelling savages by default.

No one wishes to eat unsafe food, but there is much more to this law than simply providing safeguards to the food supply.  Whatever actual safety benefits may be found in the law, there is a corresponding economic impact and effect upon personal liberty that must be considered as well.  Even as food prices are steadily rising for American consumers, the prospect of growing more of one's own food is becoming increasingly more risky due to regulatory concerns.  Food is what sustains life and any law that complicates or exerts control over a person's access to or ability to produce food must be weighed against the likelihood for abuse by those in power.

Original Intent - An Essay You Must Read

We hear a lot of talk about "Original Intent" these days, but years of judicial sophistry have muddied the waters to the point that few of us are certain what the phrase even means.

Please take a look at how my friend Kyle Roberts explains the Original Intent Scam and the often overlooked sources we should be examining.  As the 10th Amendment movement is gaining steam in numerous states seeking to check out of control federal power, a clear understanding of original intent is absolutely vital.

Tragedy Spells Opportunity for the State

In Tom Clancy's 1986 WWIII novel Red Storm Rising, the Soviet Union's leadership finds itself in desperate need of a pretext to justify the invasion of West Germany in order to neutralize NATO.  To this end, the Politburo creates a fiendish maskirovka or deception for the purpose of rousing the support of their people while simultaneously galvanizing public opinion against West Germany.  The deception consists of a bomb planted in the Kremlin which kills a number of visiting schoolchildren.  Soviet state television deliberately plays up the images of the dead children and in short order the Soviet citizens are screaming for war.

I was reminded of this story following the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.  After the photograph of the firefighter carrying the bloodied body of tiny Baylee Almon had tugged at my heart strings for the 5th or 6th time, the thought occurred to me that perhaps someone might be using her image for the purpose of inflaming and polarizing public opinion.  But the question remained:  against whom would that outrage be directed?

The target, of course, was anyone who had spoken out against the Clinton administration's statist expansion of gun control laws, attempts to nationalize health care, and other government excesses.  In a classic example of guilt-by-association, Timothy McVeigh, who was later convicted and executed for his role in the bombing, was held up as an archetype of anyone who expressed dissatisfaction with the increasingly heavy-handed, parasitic behavior of their federal government.  Two weeks later, then President Clinton famously remarked in a commencement address at Michigan State University, "There is nothing patriotic about hating your government, or pretending you can hate your government but love your country."


As writer Will Grigg pointed out, certain government officials and their enablers in the press went so far as to assign meteorological significance to the voices of dissent by accusing them of creating a "climate of fear" and an "atmosphere of hate."  The officials' goal, which was largely accomplished, was to silence critics of government policy by equating dissent--of any sort--with extremist and violent activism.  It was also a craven and shameless effort to capitalize on the tragedy of an act of madness for the purpose of expanding government power to an even greater degree.  Tragically, it's a method that works.

Blogger Milo Nickels sums up the tried and true formula as follows:

• Step 1 - wait for tragedy to occur, or actually create the tragedy.
• Step 2 - spread propaganda through the media, so everyone believes your story about the tragedy
• Step 3 - pass laws, or institute policies, that take away people's freedoms.
• Step 4 - justify the increased Tyranny by citing the propaganda in step 2.

Which brings us to the events of the past few days.

  
The police hadn't even finished stringing up the yellow tape at the crime scene of the mass shooting in Tucson before power-hungry statists were predictably seeking a way to spin the bloodshed in such a way as to gain advantage over their political opposition.  The left was quick to try to link the shooter's politics to the right and vice versa.  A great deal of sound and fury has raged over the past few days as each side has desperately sought to hang Jared Loughner like an albatross around the other's neck.  And while this exercise in futility continues, the real exploitation is taking place under our noses.    

Contrary to the artificial left/right paradigm under which so many Americans currently labor, the true opposing sides in this struggle are the state vs. the people.  And the state is currently exploiting this latest event in order to glorify itself and to expand its powers even further.

Proof of this dynamic can be shown in a number of ways.  For instance, the shooting rampage killed 6 and wounded 14, but where has the media focused its attention?  We know of the Congresswoman who was wounded; we know of her staffer and of the federal judge who was killed;  we even know about the nine year old girl who was born on 9/11.  But what do we know of the others who were killed and wounded?  The honest answer is: next to nothing.  Why is that?

Surely their lives mattered, but since they cannot be linked, either directly or indirectly, to the state and its purposes, it's curious that they remain largely nameless and faceless to us.  Further proof of this bias can be found in the charges that have been filed against the alleged shooter.  The full might of the federal government has been brought to bear and it has filed charges attempted assassination in the case of the Congresswoman and federal murder charges in the case of her aide and the judge who were killed.  The other victims of the shooting are apparently considered less sanctified beings and the state of Arizona's prosecution of Mr. Loughner will have to suffice.

Even the language of federal officials has portrayed one man's act of insanity as a grave threat to the entire federal leviathan.  In the words of House majority leader John Boehner: “An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve.  Such acts of violence have no place in our society.”  FBI Director Robert Muller described the shootings as, "an attack on our institutions and our way of life."  In the meantime, blogger Jim Wallis ratcheted up the hyperbole factor by calling the shootings, "an attack on the soul of the nation."  Where is that same sense of outrage when innocent people die at the hands of those in the employ of the federal government?

As journalist Bill Anderson so aptly puts it, Wallis, among others, is one "who sees literally everything in political symbolism. So, the rule of thumb is that if he cannot find a way to put an incident into his worship of the State, it simply doesn’t happen."  

But the state's biggest tell that it believes it is holding a winning hand in this tragedy is found the various bits of legislation being proposed that are intended to build yet another layer of legal separation between the federal government and the citizens it claims to represent.  One set of laws for the rulers, and another for the people.  It's a textbook example of what aristocracy looks like.

Rep. Robert Brady of Pennsylvania is seeking to introduce highly ambiguous legislation that would stifle even peaceful free speech by outlawing "language or symbols" that could be perceived as threatening to federal officials or lawmakers.

Image courtesy of deathby1000papercuts.com

Not to be outdone, Rep. Peter King of New York is floating a proposed law that would prohibit possession of a firearm within 1000 feet of any "high profile" government official.

Other leaders like Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) suggested the Federal Communications Commission was “not working anymore,” adding she would look at ways to better police language (thought) on the airwaves.

Add to these proposed laws the various gun control proposals now being forwarded by various special interests and professional alarmists who've long been waiting for a bloody shirt to wave, and it should be abundantly clear that tragedy spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y to many among the ruling class.  None of these proposed remedies would have stopped Jared Loughner from carrying out his gruesome task.  But it should be clear to all but the most deliberately obtuse thinkers that his attack merely provided the justification for the imposition of solutions that have long been searching for a problem.

So what exactly is the end game that these political opportunists have in mind?  No one can say for certain.  But it appears that greater restrictions on our ability to speak freely, further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms and expanded government power to further insulate itself against the citizenry it purportedly represents all play a role in the desired end result.  How that could be portrayed as a positive development for the cause of liberty requires a curious combination of Orwellian double-think and slavish devotion to the state.  Don't fall for it.